Patriotic spandex and giant Q-tips: An oral history of

Deron McBee aka Malibu relives the epic kick that took him down in 1989.

Thirty-four years ago an ironworker named Dan Carr and an Elvis impersonator named John Ferraro took over a high school gym and put on a fundraiser production for the people of Erie, Pa., originally called King of the County. The show was a Rust Belt rethinking of the coliseum spectacles of ancient Rome, in which strong men fought to the death for entertainment’s sake.

The locals who accepted this challenge were far from mythic.